Unintentional Hilarity from the New Yorker

The New Yorker is often an exercise in paternalistic parody, and this one is pretty high-laire. Very thoughtful of the New Yorker to give Southerners advice.

Re: "Southern political passions have always been rooted in sometimes extreme ideas of morality, which has meant, in recent years, abortion and school prayer."

Oh yes, extreme it is to be for prayer in school and be against killing the unborn. So radical.

Various

Funny quote sighted on a FB page: “It's never too late to become the person you never became.”

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Came across a book (“Christianity in Evolution”) that looks interesting. Right up my alley given the author's attempt to let religion and science learn from the other even though it doesn't seem the most orthodox of books. I sometimes wish Pope Benedict hadn't become pope because he had been planning to “retire” from Vatican service in order to write a book on original sin in light of modern anthropology. I always wish he'd gone that route of discovery, and thus gone beyond what he wrote in that little book about the Fall back many years ago now.

Anyway, I'm not thrilled with this author's seeming high comfort level with death, but he sure sounds Ratzingerian when he talks about Jesus and trinitarian altruism and the need to counteract self-absorption.

“Evolution has provided a new understanding of reality, with revolutionary consequences for Christianity. In an evolutionary perspective the incarnation involved God entering the evolving human species to help it imitate the trinitarian altruism in whose image it was created and counter its tendency to self-absorption. Primarily, however, the evolutionary achievement of Jesus was to confront and overcome death in an act of cosmic significance, ushering humanity into the culminating stage of its evolutionary destiny, the full sharing of God's inner life. Previously such doctrines as original sin, the fall, sacrifice, and atonement stemmed from viewing death as the penalty for sin and are shown not only to have serious difficulties in themselves, but also to emerge from a Jewish culture preoccupied with sin and sacrifice that could not otherwise account for death. The death of Jesus on the cross is now seen as saving humanity, not from sin, but from individual extinction and meaninglessness. Death is now seen as a normal process that affect all living things and the religious doctrines connected with explaining it in humans are no longer required or justified. Similar evolutionary implications are explored affecting other subjects of Christian belief, including the Church, the Eucharist, priesthood, and moral behavior.”

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The only show worth watching on MSNBC is, of course Morning Joe and I caught a bit of it recently. They had on author George Saunders and he made some interesting statements like “capitalism fosters sensuality” which seems true and reminiscent of Malcolm Muggeridge's line about how “sex is the mysticism of a materialistic society, it's only acceptable religion.” Saunders meant sensuality broader than sex of course, given our drive for all sorts of bodily comforts and stimulations.

Also heard Saunders, to paraphrase him badly, say that happy people should almost knock themselves over the heads in order to understand/empathize with/think of the many unhappy people in our society. It's as if this secular voice is preaching asceticism. Makes me think of this recent blog quotation:

From A. C. Benson, “Books,” in From a College Window (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1906), pp. 52-53:

“As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow. I see that many people find the world dreary — and, indeed, there must be spaces of dreariness in it for us all — some find it interesting; some surprising; some find it entirely satisfactory. But those who find it satisfactory seem to me, as a rule, to be tough, coarse, healthy natures, who find success attractive and food digestible: who do not trouble their heads very much about other people, but go cheerfully and optimistically on their way, closing their eyes as far as possible to things painful and sorrowful, and getting all the pleasure they can out of material enjoyments.

Well, to speak very sincerely and humbly, such a life seems to me the worst kind of failure. It is the life that men were living in the days of Noah, and out of such lives comes nothing that is wise or useful or good. Such men leave the world as they found it, except for the fact that they have eaten a little way into it, like a mite into a cheese, and leave a track of decomposition behind them.

I do not know why so much that is hard and painful and sad is interwoven with our life here; but I see, or seem to see, that it is meant to be so interwoven. All the best and most beautiful flowers of character and thought seem to me to spring up in the track of suffering; and what is the most sorrowful of all mysteries, the mystery of death, the ceasing to be, the relinquishing of our hopes and dreams, the breaking of our dearest ties, becomes more solemn and awe-inspiring the nearer we advance to it.
I do not mean that we are to go and search for unhappiness; but, on the other hand, the only happiness worth seeking for is a happiness which takes all these dark things into account, looks them in the face, reads the secret of their dim eyes and set lips, dwells with them, and learns to be tranquil in their presence.”

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When I was young I said I'd never go to a fortune-teller or palm-reader because they may give me some bad news. Thought about that today and how the role of a biblical prophet isn't too far afield from that of a fortune-teller, because look at what old Simeon told Our Lady: "a sword shall pierce your heart." Not exactly what she wanted to hear I expect.

But they also had another sort of foreknowledge, that of the ultimate end result. Came across this quote from then Cardinal Ratzinger in Co-Workers for the Truth meditation:

"Perhaps modern man buries himself so assiduously in the present because he lacks the courage to look into the future, because even to think about it gives him nightmares. Or again: we no longer fear that the sun will be vanquished by darkness and not shine for us again. What we fear nowadays is the darkness that emanates from man, and in this fear we have finally discovered true darkness—more fearful in this century of man’s inhumanity than could ever have been imagined by the generations that preceded us. We are afraid that the good that is in the world will become completely powerless....For we see it: what rules the world now is money, the atom bomb, the cynicism of those to whom nothing is sacred....Will the good continue to have meaning and power in the world? In the stable at Bethlehem a sign is given that enables us to answer with a joyous Yes! For the Child, God’s only-begotten Son, is set as a sign and a surety that in the end God will have the last word in world history and that he is truth and love."

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Watched the intense and haunting Hatfields and McCoys tv show starring Kevin Costner. Kind of hard to take in all that violence and pure unadulterated hatred. It was interesting the way they portrayed the “founding fathers” of the feud. McCoy was a devout Christian who turned to drink and apparent atheism when he was unable to square a loving God with what had happened with his family. He went slightly mad, dying alone in a fire of his own making. Hatfield started out looking like a pagan (at one point pondering killing his own son) but turned Christian, getting baptized late in life after finding that violence didn't work. I don't know how historically accurate it was, but it sure made for a riveting show.

Journal App & the Sad Fate of ND at the BCS

Wasted last night obsessed again with finding out why anyone would consider the iPad journal app called Day One given that you can't export your whole journal to a text file. (Ironic that because I'm one who is considering it.) Seems like you're totally locked into the app. Oh sure you can have your entries backed up on Dropbox, but they are stored as individual files (per entry) and thus if you want to ever get them into, say, a Word document or another journal you'd have to cut and paste the entries individually.

I've been thinking how little I get out of my past journals simply for their inaccessibility. I have only the last 13-14 months on the iPad which are definitionally uninteresting by virtue of being too recent. I have another couple years on Google docs, and then all the previous years on two separate ginormous Word documents. I'd love to have a clean way to search for anything. I suspect the ultimate goal would be to get all entries on an iPad app, if an app would even handle that sort of amount of data. I don't like the lack of “talkativeness” between iPad apps and the web - hence the ability to export the whole journal to a text file seems critical. Day One will eventually have the ability to export to a PDF, but PDFs seem fairly unusable except for printing purposes. Plus I'm not sure how to password-protect a pdf.

The sweet things about digital journals are the password protection feature and the searchability.

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Watched the so-called National Championship Monday night. One could be forgiven for thinking it a pre-Sec tune-up for Alabama. It was as engrossing as watching a high school team play a college team. Only about 20 minute of football enjoyment out of a swiftly foreordained outcome. Brent Musburger got in trouble for pointing out the obvious, that the Alabama QBs girlfriend was beautiful. Who knew that one could get in trouble for such things? ESPN apologized. And Lino Rulli said Musburger was treating this girl as an “object” despite Lino's frequent assertions of so and so being a “handsome woman”. Apparently handsome is the preferred adjective.

Flannery O'Connor & Epiphanies

Interesting link on the Atlantic about Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find.

I haven't read that one, but I've heard the famous quote - "She could have been a good woman...if it had been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life." - which I'd always interpreted as meaning that we'd all be good people if we had the threat of imminent judgmental (death, hell) hanging over us at every minute.

Anyway I liked this:

The fact that there's a brevity to human connection and human empathy—the fact that it goes away—might make you feel that we should not make a big deal that it was there at all. But of course we can't do that. We have to value the moments when a person is everything we'd hope this person would be, or became briefly something even better than she normally is. We need to give those moments the credit they're due.

Ha...

Pleasure versus Joy

Went to St. John's Byzantine yesterday and was nonplussed to learn they were celebrating the Baptism of Our Lord which I believe will be celebrated in the Roman rite next Sunday. So back-to-back Baptisms for me. The liturgy was extraordinaringly long, a healthy, rip-roaring, special expanded edition. Eastern Christianity sure makes the Baptism of Jesus a major feast. I skipped out after Communion at 11:13, the service having begun at 9:30. Fr. T brought up in his homily how he takes home a big jug of holy water ("Jordan water" he calls it) every year after this feast and uses it liberally and daily. He blesses his pets with it, puts some in his soup, blesses his bed with it before sleeping, will use it after someone troubled comes to visit in the rectory, sprinkles it in his garden, etc... Now there's the true Byzantine spirit in action - having that maximal zeal towards the sacraments and sacramentals. No Protestant-inspired fear of the material. Faith is ultimately a "gratitude machine" because if you believe, then even humble holy water is something that contains power and consolation. Faith teaches that God is not mincing in his gifts but is extravagant, even to the point of making matter (like water or bread or wine or us) holy.

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I often recall a line from Andrew Greeley's "The Jesus Myth" in which one correspondent with Greeley said that what it all comes down to is whether you consider the universe to be benevolent. Which I suppose means that it was crafted with care and not simply the result of random chaos.

It can be hard to see the universe as benevolent seeing all the suffering that occurs within it. But then suffering is not the measure of benevolence, nor is pleasure. Even the presumed atheist/author Zadie Smith sees the difference between pleasure and joy:

"A final thought: sometimes joy multiplies itself dangerously. Children are the infamous example. Isn’t it bad enough that the beloved, with whom you have experienced genuine joy, will eventually be lost to you? Why add to this nightmare the child, whose loss, if it ever happened, would mean nothing less than your total annihilation? It should be noted that an equally dangerous joy, for many people, is the dog or the cat, relationships with animals being in some sense intensified by guaranteed finitude. You hope to leave this world before your child. You are quite certain your dog will leave before you do. Joy is such a human madness.

The writer Julian Barnes, considering mourning, once said, 'It hurts just as much as it is worth.' In fact, it was a friend of his who wrote the line in a letter of condolence, and Julian told it to my husband, who told it to me. For months afterward these words stuck with both of us, so clear and so brutal. It hurts just as much as it is worth. What an arrangement. Why would anyone accept such a crazy deal? Surely if we were sane and reasonable we would every time choose a pleasure over a joy, as animals themselves sensibly do. The end of a pleasure brings no great harm to anyone, after all, and can always be replaced with another of more or less equal worth."

I was thinking about this in connection with Jennifer of Conversion Diary's recent hospitalization. I fear the worse, but thought about how by definition being open to life is also risking death. In fact, the more kids you have the more chance one will die before you, which seems the great curse. I thought about how odd it was that I thought it wrong that the mentally ill sister of Msgr. Pope (Pope being the priest who blogs at the Archdiocese of Washington website) ended up dying in a fire she started. Wrong, presumably, because he seems a holy man and one might expect his prayers to be efficacious and yet...that sentiment is so totally antithetical to the gospel because Jesus himself of course suffered and died.

That the universe is benevolent is another way of saying that God loves us. And my saint of the year, via Jennifer F's website, is St. Terese Margaret Redi, "a pious child who saw God in all things, and who was confused to learn that not everyone knew that God loved them." Indeed.

A homilist recently said that the disciple Jesus loved in the gospel according to John was not John but was you and me. All of us. What I'd long taken for braggadocio on the part of the gospel writer or his scribe might actually be considered as a placeholder for me. Crazy, but it would fit into the whole gospel zeitgeist of things not being as they appear and of the holy person's typical deflection of making things about himself or herself but in loving others and wanting them to feel included. The priest also said that when Jesus promised to Nathaniel that he (Nathaniel) would see angels rising and falling before the son of Man, we get to see that as well here on the altar. Angels are going before the son of Man here, today. Again that sense of inclusion, that hunger we all have for being included in these otherworldly things that can seem far removed from us in the 21st century.

Lino Rulli brought up something today on his radio show about how puzzling it is that God shows Himself to some and not to others. God shows himself to St. Paul so that Paul can tell others. Many of Lino's friends say they don't believe in God because God hasn't show himself to them personally. And there is a great mystery there, but when Lino and the priest were starting to address it I got a phone call. Doh! I suspect there's simply no getting around faith - even though we'd all prefer experiential knowledge instead.

Thought about poor old Andrew Greeley and how he suffered that traumatic brain injury. How tragic it seems and yet - and yet not really. Do I not believe in the Resurrection and that his body will become mint again!? So will all of us become "like angels". We mourn the decline of our natural human facilities even though they are pitifully lame compared to what we will eventually receive.!

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I tend to want to get over my numbness to prayer and sacrifice by first, ironically, self-indulgence. As if Christ said, "you must die to self after enhancing your mood sufficiently." Our Lord didn't seem concerned about us achieving consistent transcendent states of happiness in this world. Rotten luck, I say, that Truth would be suchlike. Or so I say in this life, without access to all the relevant information.

A couple moments of transcendence not found in brew or poetry today. A snippet of the catechism that resonated concerning the fulfillment of Jeremiah's new Covenant in Jesus and thus in us. And the offering of a prayer, a Hail Mary, for Jennifer F. The purity of simply asking Him "if my prayer can contribute then so be it" while not having delusions of grandeur. Of being of service in even a micro way.

Time and again I realize the freeing recognition that nothing is really possible without God and all things possible with Him. That when I'm "hitting the wall" in terms of a niggardly spirit, I don't have to depend on self alone. That when my power to love fails there is a Backup. Which is actually the Frontup, the only Love who is.

On the Unproven Theory That Venting Actually Works...

So it's back to work. The party's over. Our long national daydream has ended. Reminder to self: "Will work for charitable giving purposes."

The weather has taken a very ugly turn. Florida and NM trips did not acclimate me well to 25 degrees. (Cue violins.) But this is the new normal so I best get used to it.

Frustrations at work, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. The crappy P program blew up again - second straight quarter. Paid for my sin of just fixing the particular policy last time instead of identifying the root cause. But then it's not my program, although 99% of ownership is simply a question of need. If you need a program to work, then you're on the hook regardless of who wrote it or ostensibly owns it.

So I added missing rates using my dog-slow computer that made me unplug the machine for rebootive purposes twice.

Got home and couldn't get the flipping laptop to connect to 'net because it turns out there's a nob that you switch in order to turn on and off wireless. A hardware switch. Absolutely drove me crazy.

Lost my earbud for the umpteenth time. I understand the physics of it - that pressure in my jeans pocket can make it come off, but really would it be so hard for it to stay put within the pocket? I always look for it in the pocket after it's gone and it's never there. I've tried gluing the damn things on. I feel like buying 10,000 of the nubs just so I don't have to be held hostage to the buggers.

(Cue violins.)

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Interesting to hear Johnny Cash pull off the seemingly difficult task of performing a song about San Quentin to an audience of prisoners at San Quentin. Seems a tad presumptuous, something a more white collar type guy couldn't pull off. Cash sure was a man's man wasn't he? To sing songs to prisoners and maintain the tough guy image... Though he didn't go too much out on a limb by singing lines like, "San Quentin, I hate every inch of you."

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I tumblr'd a bit tonight and also took in some fascinating pictures via Atlantic magazine of that ultimately foreign place- the place that may as well be the moon - North Korea. It made me want to find out more about where my daughter-in-law came from, what city in South Korea and to trace her lineage. It made me simultaneously sad and happy for my grandchildren that they won't know their maternal biological grandparents. Sad for obvious reasons but happy because despite our protestations we humans crave mystery. We love the that there's something uncharted for us to search for. I have a grandmother who died before I was born and feel close to her somehow nonetheless. I pray for her, maybe she prays for me.

Novel Rank: a Box Score for Authors

If following a favorite sports team makes sense, then how much more a favorite author? Thus I'm hyp-mo-tized by Novel Rank, which allows you to track up to one hundred books and see how sales line up.

Of course there's some wailing and gnashing of teeth involved since many of my favorites are doing as well as I think they should. It's like a box score for authors although it'd be nice if there was more of a cumulative look at how a given book has done rather than just a snapshot of current sales.

Surprises include:

Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller (an older book) is at an astonishing number 736. Must be a lot of evangelical interest or "seeker" interest in it (Miller's not Catholic).

33 Days to Morning Glory by Fr. Gaitley at a strong 1,749 despite the book not having a Kindle edition. Fr. Gaitley seems to be slaking a spiritual need these days.

Style, Sex, and Substance: 10 Catholic Women Consider the Things that Really Matter seems pretty strong despite presumably being limited to an audience of mostly Catholic women. Plus it's been out awhile. It's ahead of the recently released The Complete Thinker: The Mind of GK Chesterton by Alquist, for example.

Scott Hahn's more scholarly book not doing too well (Kingdom of God as Liturgical Empire, The: A Theological Commentary on 1-2 Chronicles). More surprisingly, Dawn Eden's book My Peace I Give to You isn't doing nearly as well as it deserves.

Heather King's Redeemed is ahead of the excellent (and more recent) Shirt of Flame.

Cardinal Schoenberg's We Have Found Mercy really doing poorly at number 657,691. No mercy on the mercy book. Kind of surprising given his position in the church.

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I'm torn between my democratic instincts - if a book is selling well then it's likely good and meeting a need - and the elitist point of view that thinks the truth doesn't sell well because often people (including me of course) don't like to hear it.

The Day(s) of Christmas

In the big scheme of things - or even the little scheme of things - it's likely not that important to defend the honor of Christmas from being truncated from the famous "twelve days" to one. But there feels something in it symbolic, as if we Christians are picking up secular clues. The length of the holiday is not what the big retailers determine it to be but what the Church does. After the 25th no one is buying Christmas gifts any more, so there's no incentive for the materialistic concerns to promote the holiday.

Perhaps though instead of seeing it in conspiratorial terms it's simply that we are accustomed to see celebrations as single days, be they birthdays, anniversaries, president days, etc... Unlike the Middle Ages, there's much less a custom of multiple days attached to single remembrance.

Spielberg's "Lincoln"

Saw the movie "Lincoln". It was decent if a half-hour too long. Pious and overly devotional in some stretches, I tend to be wary of the nursing of black grievance (which is already stratospheric). But then every ethnic group thirsts to feel saintly and sinned against. Daniel Day Lewis, who played the prez, was fabulous. Gosh you just feel like he captured the spirit and mannerisms of Lincoln despite the lack of any proof thereof given the absolute dearth of Lincoln video. Too much screen time for Mary Todd. Feels like Sally Fields has something on Spielberg, or maybe he just felt like these days you have to be inclusive by not having a mostly-male story. Tommy Lee Jones was his over-the-top quasi-reptilian self. Certainly the movie highlighted a piece of history I didn't know existed, that of the incredible exertions Lincoln went though in order to get the 13th Amendment passed in the House. Had no idea it was that difficult to get it done.

Seven Long Takes

Scene outside our door at dusk yesterday.

The high, high ceiling of St. Ann's Church caught my eye Christmas Day. There in the rafters was a small blue-stained glass window, one seemingly put there just for the angels to enjoy. What a marvelous touch, I thought, putting that little window way up there as if symbolizing the heights to which we are called to or representing the element of surprise that God employs. It has about it a kind of divine hiddenness about it, as if the church designer wanted touches that transcended utility or usefulness. That little window could not be observed up close by anybody and yet I imagine the artist wasn't making it half-assedly in an attitude of "well, nobody will see this up close" but more in the spirit that God intends all of our works to be: done in a spirit of care because God sees.

St. Ann's has the little surprises of old churches, like an inexplicable nook on the other side of the altar. It's a building that invites exploration unlike most dull, modern churches which tend to eliminate mystery, much as the church in the years immediately following Vatican II tried to eliminate mystery by dumping Latin and watering down "Catholic distinctives" like the rosary. So often art and architecture and liturgy mirror what we believe. Or don't believe.

I love the stained glass windows at St. John's Byzantine church, even more so because they quote inspiring Scripture at the bottom of them instead of having the gauche script of many Roman Catholic churches, "Donated by Mr. and Mrs. So and So".

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After-Christmas was marked dramatically by conditions just shy of a blizzard. Cincy supposedly had a blizzard, while we got a winter storm, the difference apparently being just 5mph in wind (20-25mph with 40mph gusts for them). We were supposed to get a gaudy 6-10 inches of snow, but I'm thinking we ended up with maybe 4-5. Certainly wasn't overtiring shoveling the driveway. Never one to let a good crisis go to waste, I decided to work from home on the 26th.

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Books! You knaves! You drive me to distraction with your infinite variety and buy-crying, voices calling to me with such seductive flair! I had to buy Hilary Mantel's "Bringing Up the Bodies" of course, seeing how it's about a period of history I'm particularly interested in (King Henry VIII-era). And of course I had to buy Jody Bottum's work called "Christmas Plains" simply on the basis of his discursive, eclectic and engaging writing.

Finished ye olde "The Bartender's Tale", my 16th of the rapidly fading 2012. It was engaging if a bit sentimental. Kind of Earl Hammer-ish in some ways.

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From Chesterton:

"Christ­mas occurs in the win­ter. It is the ele­ment not mere­ly of con­trast, but actu­al­ly of antag­o­nism. It pre­serves every­thing that was best in the mere­ly prim­i­tive or pagan view of such cer­e­monies or such ban­quets. If we are carous­ing, at least we are war­riors carous­ing. We hang above us, as it were, the shields and battle-axes with which we must do bat­tle with the giants of the snow and hail. All com­fort must be based on dis­com­fort. Man choos­es when he wish­es to be most joy­ful the very moment when the whole mate­r­i­al uni­verse is most sad. It is this con­tra­dic­tion and mys­ti­cal defi­ance which gives a qual­i­ty of man­li­ness and real­i­ty to the old win­ter feasts which is not char­ac­ter­is­tic of the sunny felic­i­ties of the Earth­ly Par­adise."

-- “Christ­mas Books,” Appre­ci­a­tions

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I'm getting little gleams of goodness from the Catechism readings. Like the following passage, which offers a kind of "course correction" on my assumption that God the Father approved of his Son's obedience in being baptized by John merely for his own sake:

"Father’s voice responds to the Son’s acceptance, proclaiming his entire delight in his Son. The Spirit whom Jesus possessed in fullness from his conception comes to “rest on him.” Jesus will be the source of the Spirit for all mankind. At his baptism “the heavens were opened”—the heavens that Adam’s sin had closed—and the waters were sanctified by the descent of Jesus and the Spirit, a prelude to the new creation."

This suggests that the Father's joy over Jesus was for our sake, that Jesus had, with his Baptism, opened the heavens for us! Again it shows a Father not bent on receiving his obedience for His own sake, but towards a goal of restoration of everyone. I've always pictured it as God the Father seeing Jesus subordinating himself to John and saying with exasperation, "At last! Someone down there has done it right!" False!

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Despite all the turmoil and craziness of the holiday season, there was under-girding it all a kind of feeling hard to describe. If it felt like a roller-coaster ride during which I wasn't much in control and barely hanging on, there was a sort of refreshing brainlessness to it, a change of pace from the heavy mind use that constitutes my daily life of reading and computer programming. The great chill - it was in the 20s yesterday which is reasonably uncomfortable for someone of Irish heritage who, in his blood, has rarely seen sub-40 temps - contributed to a feeling of convalescence, of those "bad old days" when I actually got a cold or flu once or twice a year and thus was "subjected" to a massive influx of entertainment.

Thinking of getting Tom Wolfe's latest novel about Miami titled "Back to Blood". The title is a reference to a character saying that in these post-religion days we're losing that which united us and thus we're "back to blood", i.e. feeling solidarity only towards those of our ethnicity. Downloaded first chapter on Kindle and am surprised by how engrossing it is. I'm going to order the hardback because I wanted to re-experience the sensuous presence of a physically well-built book, as most of Wolfe's are. I'm not sure it's the best thing for him to write so nakedly about tensions between whites and Latinos (does writing about race inflame the situation further?) but it's interesting to read his novelistic reportage on how many Hispanics view "Americanos", the term used by Miami Cubans when talking among themselves. "Anglo" is the term for whites when they're talking to outsiders. I sense it's not a good sign when you refer to a group by one name within your own group and by a different name outside that group. Ala the n-word being used by whites historically.

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So the sweet uplands of vacation are now behind me and I face the physics of moving my body from shower to car to parking garage to work.

Began watching How Beer Saved the World last night, a tasty little Netflix offering. A documentary with a sense of humor. Also have "Captain America" in the queue.

For better or worse, I'm long past the need to do something social on New Year's Eve simply because it's New Year's Eve. In the bad old 80s and 90s it was a grand holiday spent at bars with the boys looking for girls. But certainly marriage drains the social impulse greatly by eliminating the chase of the skirt. Not sure how much was my appreciation for camaraderie with the guys and how much was desire for finding a potential mate.

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Didn't go to my Byzantine parish yesterday in part because that Eastern liturgy's music is not influenced by liturgical season. Nothing really of Christmas to it. But the carols at my Roman Catholic parish were terribly saccharine, like Away in a Manger. My least favorite ones with two of the four I'd never even heard of. Oh but I was hoping for "O Come All Ye Faithful". I know Christmas is supposed to be twelve days, but the flavor at mass is more "one and done" as compared to Easter. With Easter, you're likely to hear "Jesus Christ Was Risen Today" two consecutive Sundays, while with Christmas the Sunday after we're celebrating the Holy Family and the childhood of Jesus. There are still Christmas hymns sung on the Sunday after but they tend to be more like "Away in a Manger" than "Hark the Herald Angels Sing". A bit o' a letdown. Not that we go to church for the hymns of course.

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Grandson Sam was saying over and over, "I want Netflix." About ten times we'd watched the familiar castle at the beginning of a Netflix'd Disney show, rewinding and cheering as it loomed back into view. Definitely as he nears 3 years old he's feeling his oats these days, is much more assertive and energetic. Gosh I don't know how parents do it, but about the 70th time Sam said "I want Netflix" I felt a bit of chaos: I was trying to figure out how to program the remote to the new TV while Sam was saying "I want Netflix" while our 100lb dog was trying to hop in my lap and while baby Will was starting to cry. I can see so clearly the necessity of mancaves and just why they are so popular. They're completely optional - unless you have kids.

My wife certainly seems in her wheelhouse here in this land of kids and plenty. Vacations at home are always her favorite since she has the comforts of home, joined with the possibility of making home improvements of some type, joined also with ubiquitous grandchildren opportunities.

Parents take on superhuman qualities in my eyes after getting a glimmer of what they go through daily. (Stepson Aaron says his secret to parenting is "have very low expectations about how the day will go.") Kids drive parents crazy, almost by design it would seem. It's sobering to realize I was once all need, all noise and an effective agent of parental insanity.

I must admit that drinking with the kids here makes the kids being here 62% more enjoyable by volume, where volume is measured by the ale pint and the wail-cry. All-in-all much nicer where "nicer" is defined downwardly. I'm thinking that it's better to bring a bad mood into a medium mood versus transforming a medium mood to a great mood. Ok, enough whining. And wine-ing.

Sam was unbearably cute in a video Steph made of him waiting for my arrival on Christmas Day. He was waiting by door, looking for any sign of "Paw-Paw" and alternating between audible thoughts of Paw-paw and Uncle Bud, the latter of whom Sam said over and over, "Uncle Bud has a boo-boo." (His nemesis Uncle Bud being in the hospital for a potential blood clot.) Sam was giddy upon recognizing my car in the driveway and when I got in immediately treated me to a drum solo on his new equipment.

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It looks like my fetish to "live like a hunter-gatherer because that's the way we evolved except with respect to alcohol consumption" may have another requirement. I just read a Daily Beast article on the parenting hunter/gatherer style and it seems that "allo-parenting" is probably good for kids and certainly has the wisdom of the ages behind it.

Allo-parenting is basically letting everyone help raise your child, particularly grandparents and aunts and uncles. So it would seem that parents spending less time with kids is not likely to weaken the parent/child bond.

The article certainly makes me queasy on certain things, like the insouciance traditional societies have with regard to premarital sex - and it makes me outraged over others, like the approval of infanticide. My fetish for all things natural comes up against the object of man as a dogma-making animal. That which make us different from animals is that we don't simply do what "comes natural". We are called to something higher. The author of the piece seems mainly concerned only with what "works" rather than what's right. The two notions aren't the same.

And of course I'm not exactly thrilled about how traditional societies reject consuming anything passively from outsiders, be it books, movies, etc... But that would explain their marked sociability and length of time spent talking. If one doesn't read or watch tv, you have plenty of time and inclination to find your entertainment in talking to others and being more sociable. I predict the explosion of entertainment options with the invention of tablets and smart phones will make social skills even rarer going forward.

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Am haunted by Cardinal Dolan quoting St. Padre Pio today as saying something along the lines that "silence and tears are the only way to God". Must google exact quote. I think about how rarely I do either one.

Cardinal Ratzinger writes about silence in a recent meditation in "Co-Workers of the Truth":

"Christmas beckons us to enter into God’s silence; and his mystery remains unknown to so many because they cannot find the silence in which God is active. How can we find it? Absence of words alone does not yet produce it. For a person may well remain silent outwardly, while inside he is completely torn apart by the restlessness of so many things. A person may well be silent, and yet there is a frightening noise inside him. To enter into silence means: to discover a new inner order."

"The dinosaurs are said to have become extinct because their development went in the wrong direction: plenty of armor plate and little brain, plenty of muscles and little sense. Are we not also about to develop in a wrong direction: plenty of technology but little soul? A thick armor plate of material expertise but an emptied heart? Dearth of the ability to perceive God’s voice in us, to recognize and acknowledge what is good and beautiful and true? Is it not high time for an adjustment in our 'evolutionary' course?"

Excerpt

"Look at the sun, it is grand, glorious, and majestic; nobody could possibly overlook its yearly triumphal return. Should not its Creator at his arrival be even more majestic, more impressive? Should not this very sunrise of history flood the face of the earth with inexpressible glory? Yet instead—how miserable is everything we hear about in the Gospel! Or could it be that this very misery, this insignificance within the framework of this world, is the hallmark of the Creator, by which he makes known his presence? This, at first, appears to be an unbelievable thought. And yet—if we explore the mystery of God’s providence, we will see ever more clearly that God seems to give of himself a twofold sign. There is, first of all, the sign of his creation. But alongside this sign there appears more forcefully the other, the sign of what is insignificant in this world. The most genuine and most important values are found in this world precisely under the sign of humility, of hiddenness, of silence. Whatever is decisively great in this world, whatever determines its fate and its history, is that which appears small to our eyes. God, after having chosen the small and ignored people of Israel for his very own people, has made, in Bethlehem, the sign of insignificance into the decisive sign of his presence in this world. This is the challenge of the holy night—faith; faith to receive him under this sign and to trust him without arguing or grumbling."

Cardinal Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth

From the Dep't of "You Can't Make It Up"

Only half of Americans are dissatisfied with the way Obama handled Benghazi. Koolaid, meet drinker; drinker, meet Koolaid.

All of which leads me to wonder if Nixon would've had to resign in disgrace if he'd been more likable.

Interesting Election Take

...i.e. follow the economy, via NR (click to enlarge):

Image and Likeness

I could profitably meditate, perhaps forever, on the startling truth that man was made in the image and likeness of God and that therein lies the source of our dignity.

I recall a decade or so wondering why the Church thought the modern world devalued ourselves. Isn't it rather the opposite, that we are making ourselves gods? And yet I see the wisdom in it now: we undersell life at every opportunity, most notably in killing our unborn. A million babies a year dying says, in an especially stark way, that we don't value life. That existence is not necessarily better than non-existence. That was brought home to me in a conversation with a co-worker who was in favor of abortion for those who would be born in poverty.

Do we see others as so infinitely precious that God with sacrifice Himself to Himself for each of us? That is such a hard vision to maintain. We are, after all, abundantly numerous. There are billions of us in the world. We are not cheap or rare in the way a diamond or gold is, not scarce in material terms. But we are very dear in spiritual terms. And we suffer, in small ways or in large, and suffering in life tends to make us think life is worth less, that it's more burden than gift and in old age or sickness euthanasia becomes attractive. We judge life on the pleasure it brings us rather than the goal of virtue and Heaven.